Sheepherders/Pastoralists Who Jurisdiction of a Resident Queen Who Lustrious Precedents

eaping as we do the "har- ancient city-Terqa (modern Ash- write to the King in Mari about, be- vest of time" out of the ara), on the Euphrates, in Syria sides other matters, the "nomads": ground, the sowing sea- some 60 kilometers north of the "The Suteans have settled to the .son for us archaeologists Iraqi border. To the south, the an- north of Terqa, and they come and comes long before the period we cient city of Mari is well known from go, back and forth, to meet with me; actually spend in the field. In our many seasons of excavations con- no incident has occurred. But, in case it goes back to more than ten ducted by the French. About 1750 anticipation of the campaign of the years ago. B.C. Mari fell to the army of the fa- King, my lord, the Yaminites have It was the summer of 1966 when mous Babylonian King Hammurapi, revolted like a single man, as they we first set foot in Syria to under- never to come back to life again. In make their way in the Upper Coun- take a reconnaissance trip of the the ruins of the royal palace, the try to and from their settlements" area where the desert merges into Babylonians left behind, among (ARM 3 13: 10-12). In some ways, the steppe, around that caravan other things, a large archive of Terqa seems in fact closer to these station of all times, Palmyra. We cuneiform tablets from which we nomads than the capital-and that both had been studying the avail- gain a great deal of information was the expectation we had before able evidence from Syria and about the Amorites. And, of course, us as we came to start excavations Mesopotamia concerning the about Terqa-which at that time there. movements of early nomads-or was a province of Mari. The King of When we began our work in Oc- semi-nomads, as one calls the Mari had a palace there, under the tober, 1976, we were following il- sheepherders/pastoralists who jurisdiction of a resident queen who lustrious precedents. The site had rode on donkeys rather than cam- would welcome him on his periodic been identified in 191 1 when a Ger- els. Our general time frame was visits and would write affectionate man archaeologist, Ernst Herzfeld, around 2,000 B.C. Our goal: to see letters to him from Terqa. came to it quite by accident: he if evidence of human occupation Also the governor of Terqa would happened to be travelling on the for that time period could be found-artifacts, for instance, such as pottery, or burials, or ideally, set- MAP OF SYRIA with emphasis on regions where desert and steppe tlements. We found none that we merge. could identify for that period, al- though we did find much that could be dated earlier, back to the Paleo- lithic, and later, down to the Byzan- tine period. Yet, we knew the area was the homeland of a group of people, the Amorites, who about that time were threatening the secu- rity of the last Sumerian Dynasty in Lower Mesopotamia; we, knew, in other words, that it was inhabited. Our failure to uncover any traces of their presence was probably due, in part at least, to what seems to have been a characteristic of the Amo- rites, namely the lack of large, urban settlements of their own. Returning to Syria 10 years later, we are approaching the same prob- lem from a different perspective. This time we have gone to a known area of the nomads, this time we EDGE wanted to start from the fringes of the urban area toward which they were attracted in their wanderings thousands of years ago. From here, we will slowly work our way toward the desert, with a new survey which, since it will be done with more time and planning, might hopefully yield those results we had missed in 1966. We were also brought to Syria by another new development of recent years. The all important discoveries at Ebla had shed a whole new light on the role of Syria in the process of growth of early Near Eastern civilization. It had become clear that Syria, far from being an appendix to the urban civilization of the South- ern Mesopotamian alluvium, was an integral part of a unified cultural de- AREA OF EXCAVATION of Residential Unit (SG4, level 15) overlooking the velopment, and a major autono- Euphrates. See map of Terqa on page 8 for location on the site. mous force within it. Thus, our interest in Terqa was hopefully to main highway which skirted the site Yet, regular work there was not un- lead to important archaeological a few miles to the west when, dur- dertaken until 50 years later. harvests in this direction too. Since ing a stop, his horses got lost. While In the spring of 1975, a new the Euphrates was the major axis of they were being retrieved by his at- American Expedition by Johns this new dimension of Mesopota- tendants, he wandered about the Hopkins University, under the direc- mian civilization, Terqa, at midpoint countryside and stumbled upon our tion of Delbert Hillers, began its on the Euphrates between Ebla and site. The villagers presented him work at the site. In two operations at Akkad, is likely to shed much light with several artifacts, and he him- the southern end of the site, he was on the contacts between the two, self found more on the surface- able to confirm the presence of sec- and on the intrinsic dynamics of one of these giving the ancient ond millennium material just below that cultural process which saw ur- name of the city. Twelve years later, the surface, with interesting pottery banism and literacy spread to the two eminent French philologists, F. types like the one shown here. The great river valley of the Fertile Cres- Thureau-Dangin and E. Dhorme, following year, in the fall of 1976, cent. With all these thoughts in undertook a brief five-day season operations were resumed with an mind, we were impatient to come to (with a group of French legion- enlarged scope which included reap the fruits which so much pre- naires as workmen) and were able UCLA and California State Univer- paratory work promised would be to establish two important facts. sity at Los Angeles, besides Johns very abundant and rewarding. And First, there was a major settlement Hopkins, in a newly named Joint so they were. which dated back to the third and American Expedition to Ashara, un- Let us begin our description with second millennium, B.C. Second, der the direction of the present finds from the earliest periods. We the second millennium was overlaid writers. That is, then, when we know now, after our season of immediately by Islamic remains. On came back to Syria to resume the 1976, that Terqa was an important this basis, the site appeared to be search we had started ten years city as far back as the time of the most promising for excavations. earlier. Rather than from the core earliest cities, the time of Ebla and of Sumer. Not that we found the city as such-in just six weeks of excavations this could hardly be the case. But we have sufficient clues to make that conclusion inescap- able. The major one is that we have come across a monumental building of such a size that nothing less than a fully developed urban econ- omy can be assumed to have made it possible. While the limited ex- posure resulting from our excavations does not allow yet a thorough understanding of its structure, its monumentality stands out in full, even just from the sketch shown on page 2. The area shown in gray is all a mass of mudbrick, which must at one point have served as the outer wall of an imposing public building, possibly a palace or a temple. We were able to find an in- side room of small dimensions: two A BRONZE SPEARHEAD of the third millennium, identical in shape to those rock cairns were standing at two found in the famous Ur graves in Southern Mesopotamia. corners, flanking the only entrance to the room, through a narrow pas- A QUADRUPED (an ox?) made of clay, possibly used as a toy; from the second sageway. The floor of the room was millennium B.C. sloping sharply inward, and it was interesting, as a result of careful excavations, to be able to reconstruct how some of the rocks had tumbled down following the natural slope of the floor toward the lower edge of the room. From these early periods we have also objects of war, such as a spearhead identical in shape to those found in the royal tomb at Ur, and, in contrast, toy animals of clay. "How can you possibly date such a structure?", might well be any reader's question who looks at the cover photo of the brick structure. That was our question as we were digging day after day and were uncovering more and more bricks without any objects which might serve as a specific point of reference for chronology. Until- until, tucked away in the corner at the very edge of our excavations, we came upon the burial of a woman, which was going to serve as the explicit label we had been searching for. She had been buried with a garment wrapped around her body and fastened by two pins at the shoulder from which apparently a small ring and a black stone bead were hanging: these were found where you'd expect them, right on or near the humerus, and their use is documented representationally by a shell inlay from the nearby city of Mari.

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